• Repeating the name of God, meditation, worship, offering

libations in sacred fire, penance--all these are for bringing forth

renunciation. The efforts of those who have not attained
renunciation are like those of a man who is pulling at oars all the
while that the boat is at anchor.

Conversation with Priya Nath Sinha. Recorded in Bengali. Complete Works, 5: 395

• The only God to worship is the human soul in the

human body.
• Realise religion. That is all there is to do.
• Real religion is one, but we quarrel with the forms, the
symbols, the illustrations.
• Thinking of God, some weep, some sing, some laugh,
some dance, some say wonderful things, but all speak
of nothing but God.
• All who have actually attained any real religious
experience never wrangle over the form in which the
different religions are expressed. They know that the
soul of all religions is the same and so they have no
quarrel with anybody just because he or she does not
speak in the same tongue.
• Morality exits first; later religion codifies it.
• External practices have value only as helps to develop
internal purity.
• Do not criticize others, for all doctrines and all dogmas are
good; but show them by your lives that religion is no matter
of books and beliefs, but of spiritual realization.
• Only those who have seen it will understand this; but
such spirituality can be given to others, even though
they be unconscious of the gift.
• Only those who have attained to this power are amongst
the great teachers of mankind. They are the powers of
light.
• God is in everything, where else shall we go to find
Him?
• Do not disturb the faith of any. For you must know
that religion is not in doctrines.
• He is in everything, He is everything.
• We can have no conception of God higher than man, so
our God is man, and man is God.
• GOD is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer
than everything in this and next life.
• None but men of great renunciation, none but
mighty giants among men, have a right to that Love
Divine.
• Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in
our own hearts and in every living being.
• "I am the thread that runs through all these pearls," and
each pearl is a religion or even a sect thereof. Such are
the different pearls, and God is the thread that runs
through all of them; most people, however, are entirely
unconscious of it.
• How can religion or morality begin without
renunciation itself?
• All who have actually attained any real religious
experience never wrangle over the form in which the
different religions are expressed. They know that the
soul of all religions is the same and so they have no
quarrel with anybody just because he or she does not
speak in the same tongue.
• It is impossible to find God outside of ourselves. Our
own souls contribute all the divinity that is outside
of us. We are the greatest temple. The objectification is
only a faint imitation of what we see within ourselves.
• God comes to you in the blind, in the halt, in the poor,
in the weak, in the diabolical.
• The basis of all religions is the same, wherever they
are; try to help them all you can, teach them all you can,
but do not try to injure them.
• The whole universe is a symbol, and God is the essence
behind.
• Brahman, this Reality, is unknown and unknowable, not
in the sense of agnostic, but because to know Him
would be a blasphemy, because you are He already.
• To be good and to do good-------------------that is the
whole of religion.
• To devote your life to the good of all and to the
happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your
own sake is not religion.
• True religion is not talk, or doctrines, or theories, nor is it
sectarianism. It is the relation between soul and God. Religion does
not consist in erecting temples, or building churches, or attending
public worship. It is not to be found in books, or in words, or in
lectures, or in organizations. Religion consists in realization. We must
realize God, feel God, see God, talk to God. That is religion.
• Realise religion, no talking will do.
• Try to be pure and unselfish------------------that is the
whole of religion.
• Do not bother your head with religious theories.
• Do not talk religion.
• Enter not the door of any organised religion.
• Seek not, and that is God.
• As you began in God, you must go back to God.
• See God in your children.
• Do not limit God anywhere.
• See Him in your own soul. That is practical religion.
• There is one thing which is the world and another which is
God; and this distinction is very true.
• The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature.
• Unselfishness is God.
• Everywhere is He.
• He is all.
• Truth is my God.
• Be one with the universe, be one with Him.
• Religion is the realisation of spirit as spirit.
• Where there is love, it is He.
• Religion is the manifestation of the soul nature.
• Religion is not a thing of imagination but of direct
perception.
• This realisation alone is the soul of religion.
• The Vedanta says, there is nothing that is not God…
………………….The living God is within you, and yet
you are building churches and temples and believing all
sorts of imaginary nonsense. The only God to worship
is the human soul, in the human body. Of course, all
animals are temples too, but man is the highest, the Taj
Mahal of temples. If I can not worship in that no other
temples will be of any advantage.
• It was the same God, and the different realisations were
only degrees and differences of vision.
• No two persons have the same religion.
• The religious ideals of the future must embrace all that
exists in the world.
• Talking, talking religion is but little good.
• A Sannyasi cannot belong to any religion.
• Do not fight over methods. Look only for realisation
and choose the best method you can find to suit you.
• Religion is the search after the highest ideal.
• Know that service to these (poor, illiterate, ignorant, and
afflicted) alone is the highest religion.
• What is Religion?

Stand upon the Self, then only can we truly love the world. Take
a very, very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must
look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world.
It is but baby’s play, and we know that, so cannot be disturbed
by it. If the mind is pleased with praise, it will be displeased
with blame. All pleasures of the senses or even of the mind
are evanescent, but within ourselves is the one true unrelated
pleasure, dependent upon nothing. It is perfectly free, it is
bliss. The more our bliss is within, the more spiritual we are.
The pleasure of the Self is what the world calls religion.
• Look upon every man, woman, and everyone as God.
You can not help anyone; you can only serve; serve the
children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you
have the privilege. If the Lord grants that you can help
anyone of His children, blessed you are; do not think
too much of yourselves. Blessed you are that that
privilege was given to you when others had it not.
Do it only as a worship. The poor and the miserable
are for our salvation, so that we may serve the Lord
coming in the shape of the diseased, coming in the
shape of the lunatic, the leper, and the sinner.
• We have wept long enough; no more weeping, but stand on
your feet and be men. It is a man-making religion that we want.
It is man-making theories that we want. It is man-making
education all round that we want. And here is the test of
truth-------------------anything that makes you weak physically,
intellectually and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in
it, it cannot be true. Truth is strengthening, Truth is purity,
Truth is all knowledge. Truth must be strengthening, must be
enlightening, must be invigorating.
• To him who has nothing in the universe the Lord comes.
• God is love, and only he who has known God as love can
be a teacher of godliness and God to man.
• Do not search for God in obscure places, for God is there in
front of you in millions forms. He who loves creation is
serving God…………….Throw away the paraphernalia of
worship! Go out and worship man, for God has appeared in
 the form of man, and to worship man is to serve man and to
serve is to toil and labour.
• The Most Joyful Thing in the World
The Best
RELIGION SHOULD BE THE MOST JOYFUL THING IN THE
WORLD, BECAUSE IT IS THE BEST.
• The field of religion is beyond our senses, beyond even our
consciousness. We cannot sense God. Nobody has seen God
with his eyes or ever will see; nobody has God in his
consciousness. I am not conscious of God, nor you, nor
anybody. Where is God? Where is the field of religion? It is
beyond the senses, beyond consciousness. Consciousness is
only one of the many planes in which we work; you will have
to transcend the field of consciousness, to go beyond the senses,
approach nearer and nearer to your own centre, and as you do
that, you will approach nearer and nearer to God. What is the
proof of God? Direct perception, Pratyaksha. The proof of this
wall is that I perceive it. God has been perceived that way by
thousands before, and will be perceived by all who want to
perceive Him. But this perception is no sense-perception at all;
it is supersensuous, superconscious, and all this training is
needed to take us beyond the senses. By means of all sorts of
past work and bondages we are being dragged downwards;
these preparations will make us pure and light. Bondages
will fall off by themselves, and we shall be buoyed up
beyond this plane of sense-perception to which we are tied
down, and then we shall see, and hear, and feel things which
men in the three ordinary states (viz waking, dream, and
sleep) neither feel, nor see, nor hear. Then we shall speak a
strange language, as it were, and the world will not
understand us, because it does not know anything but the
senses. True religion is entirely transcendental. Every being
that is in the universe has the potentiality of transcending the
senses; even the little worm will one day transcend the senses
and reach God. No life will be a failure; there is no such thing
as failure in the universe. A hundred times man will hurt
himself, a thousand times he will tumble, but in the end he
will realise that he is God. We know there is no progress in a
 straight line. Every soul moves, as it were, in a circle, and
will have to complete it, and no soul can go so low but there
will come a time when it will have to go upwards. No one
will be lost. We are all projected from one common centre,
which is God. The highest as well as the lowest life God ever
projected, will come back to the Father of all lives. "From
whom all beings are projected, in whom all live, and unto
whom they all return; that is God.
• Religion as a science, as a study, is the greatest and healthiest
exercise that the human mind can have.
• It is not much use to talk about religion until one has felt it.
• Religion is the highest motive power.
• Religion begins where philosophy ends.
• The greatest name man ever gave to God is Truth.
• After so much austerity, I have understood this as the real truth,
God is present in every Jiva; there is no other God besides
that. ‘Who serves Jiva, serves God indeed’.
• Each soul is potentially divine.
The goal is to manifest this divinity within, by controlling nature,
external and internal.
Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or
philosophy----------------by one, or more, or all of these------------------
and be free.
This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or
books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details.
• All who have actually attained any real religious experience
never wrangle over the form in which the different religions are
expressed. They know that the soul of all religions is the same
and so they have no quarrel with anybody just because he or
she does not speak in the same tongue.